Charm and bottom production in inclusive double Pomeron exchange in heavy-ion collisions at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

The inclusive double Pomeron exchange cross section for heavy-quark pair production is calculated for nucleus-nucleus collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. The present estimate is based on hard diffractive factorization, corrected by absorptive corrections and nuclear effects. The theoretical uncertainties for nuclear collisions are investigated and a comparison to other approaches is presented. The production channels giving a similar final state configuration are discussed as well.